By Lisa Philp, RDH, President of Transitions Group North America

A vast majority of dental practices across North America “hyper focus” on attracting new patients for growth,

Lisa Philp, RDH, President of Transitions Group North America

Lisa Philp, RDH, President of Transitions Group North America

as opposed to focusing on a proactive approach to keeping all active patients attached to the practice or an organized system to address the patients who have fallen through the cracks.

The hygiene schedule drives 40% of the total production of a practice and is responsible for 80% of the restorative scheduled in the future month, for acceptance of previously diagnosed dentistry, new diagnoses and treatment plans.

The proactively organized system supports the active patient focus, ensuring that the active patient count is current at all times include:

  1. Identifying the patients in the day who have family members not scheduled
  2. Daily chart reviews of patients who have outstanding dental treatment plans
  3. Pre-scheduling the next appointment before the patient leaves the hygiene room
  4. Making sure patients who cancel via phone are always rescheduled
  5. Systematic confirmation and reminders based on patients preferred communication mode
  6. A dedicated person to focus weekly attention on contacting outstanding patients.

The steps of a reactively organized reactivation system include:

  1. Knowing all patients who are not scheduled in hygiene
  2. Running a report of all patients who are OVERDUE or NOT scheduled in hygiene, based on the current month, 30 days, 60 days and over 90 days
  3. Spending uninterrupted time each week to reach out via phone, mail, email or texting, depending on the patient’s preference.
  4. Creating a mailing program for patients who have outstanding treatment plans to encourage them to consider accepting.
  5. Monitoring and tracking the efforts of the number of outbound contacts and the result of each contact.

If you reactivated one patient per week, at an average annual patient value of a $400, you would recapture $20,800 in production, plus the opportunity to revisit outstanding treatment plans.